


rest clean your conscious

by tempalays



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Remembering, Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Gen, Memory Loss, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, set immediately after bucky pulls steve out of the water, the very beginnings of recovery, visiting the smithsonian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 22:18:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19036714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempalays/pseuds/tempalays
Summary: The Winter Soldier doesn’t know why he saves Mission Number 1024, but he does, nevertheless. He walks away from the bank, Steve Rogers laid out on his back, unconscious behind him, and the man should be dead. The Asset was ordered to kill him multiple times. The first time on the bridge, the second time on the carrier. For the first time in over sixty years of commission, the Winter Soldier has failed not one but two orders, but, for the first time in over sixty years, the Winter Soldier becomes aware that perhaps he is more than simply an Asset.-Or, Bucky drags Steve onto the riverbank. He doesn't understand why. Maybe he never will.





	rest clean your conscious

**Author's Note:**

> ok so this started off as me being really sad and channelling it into a bucky character study but then i realised it could be a jumping off point for the canon divergent tws fic ive been wanting to write for years so..... if all goes to plan at some point in the future there should be a 20k> sequel to this but no promises

He pulls Steve out of the water, pulls him by the shoulder strap of his suit, soaked through and bloody and drops him on the bank. People will find him. He’ll be fine. 

 

The Winter Soldier doesn’t know why he saves Mission Number 1024, but he does, nevertheless. He walks away from the bank, Steve Rogers laid out on his back, unconscious behind him, and the man should be dead. The Asset was ordered to kill him multiple times. The first time on the bridge, the second time on the carrier. For the first time in over sixty years of commission, the Winter Soldier has failed not one but two orders, but, for the first time in over sixty years, the Winter Soldier becomes aware that perhaps he is more than simply an Asset. That maybe once he was something to somebody.  After all, why would Captain America risk it all for the Asset.

 

On the bridge, he calls the Winter Soldier ‘Bucky’. _ ‘Who the hell is Bucky?’.  _ After he fails to take out both Captain America and the Black Widow, they sedate him and bring him back. This is his first failure to provide a successful mission report in fifteen years. After he’s back at their base, wherever the hell it is, they get the Asset strapped into his own purpose built chair and prepare him for wipe and cryo. The doctors assigned to him come in and calibrate the machines, but not before the Asset can choke out a maligned  _ ‘I knew him.’.  _ He would have continued, had he been given the chance, but the chance to speak means a chance to remember, so he opens his mouth and bites down and shuts up because after sixty years of painful and perpetual torture the Asset has learnt like a dog being beaten that some battles are not worth fighting. 

 

They take him out not long after, this time with warnings and threats that if he fails to comply and fails to provide a successful mission report that he’ll be decommissioned. The Asset knows that this means he’ll be killed- put into cryo and have the power turned off. He won’t wake up. He may not know himself, or much at all for that matter, but the Winter Soldier has a relationship with death that is more complex than others. Every time he’s awake he snuffs out a life, or two or three or fifty, but every time he comes back and completes his mission report he’s put back down, every time just a hair length, a degree away from death. Each time he feels his brain go numb and his body shut down, screaming around the starchy black rubber that coats the palate of his mouth because  _ he doesn’t want to die  _ as they lower the temperature of the chamber he’s secured in. It doesn’t matter that he’ll wake up at some point because he passes out with adrenaline pumping through his body, desperately trying to keep him alive with the last thought in his head always  _ ‘I don't want to die’.   _ Laughably, the Asset’s fear of death is one of the only human things about him but he passes out before he can ever process that he’s scared in the first place.

 

He fails for the second time. Captain America is alive, soaked to the bone and unconscious but alive nevertheless. Now that everyone knows about HYDRA, who they are and what they’re capable of the Winter Soldier knows that it’s only so long before they reach their demise, which means he has three options. Go back to his handlers and be decommissioned, go back to his handlers and eventually be taken by the US secret service but eventually be let free because there is no proof of any of the crimes he’s committed, or, leave Captain America on the river bank and walk away. 

 

The Winter Soldier doesn’t know who he is or why he left Steve Rogers alive, but he’s spent enough time on the run in his life for him to know what to do. He wants to stay in the States for now, but if need be he can go to Russia or Kazakhstan, Japan if it gets really rough- the Yakuza owe him multiple favours. Though there’s something in his chest that’s calling out for Brooklyn so he’ll get settled and head there first, just to satiate the burning feeling in his chest if only for a little while.

 

Until then, the Asset (is he an Asset anymore, though? Now that he’s defected?) needs to find some new clothes, figure out a way to lay low and a way to hide his arm. SHIELD operatives will be here soon to pick up Steve’s body and no doubt the Winter Soldier will be their next area of focus. The M4A1 slung across his back isn’t exactly subtle, nor is the leather that crosses across his chest and hugs him tightly, a tough outer shell. Once he’s no longer sheltered within the confines of the trees he has maybe ten minutes to find replacement clothes to try and fit in with before they find him.

 

Once he comes out, he runs. The knives rattle in their protective casings strapped around his legs and the M4 thumps against the back of his chest to the rhythm that his feet hit the ground. Time is ticking. He doesn’t want a scene, the easiest way to do this is to find a goodwill, go in, get out, and start moving. The Winter Soldier runs fast enough so that no one can get a good look at him, weaving across streets to the nearest place that he can find new clothes. Time passes, he takes note of every camera he passes and every vantage point within one hundred yards. The more time he spends out in the open in plain sight the higher his chances of getting taken down.

 

He ends up finding an unbranded thrift store, small and empty and on an inconspicuous street opposite a bodega and a pizza place. He pushes the door open, and it slams shut behind him. The only person in there is a young guy manning the register, maybe 18, and upon seeing Bucky he takes three steps back and brandishes a telephone book as if it could do him any attention. 

 

“I’m not here to hurt you.” The Soldier tells him. He goes to the men’s section, finds a pair of worn denim jeans, an oversized black leather jacket with cracked elbows and a jerky zipper and a t-shirt and goes into the changing room. He doesn’t remember what it’s like to have clothes, doesn’t remember what he’s meant to be looking for in a jacket that fits, but they’re staying on so he figures that it's fine, he’s fine. When he comes out he grabs a plain black knapsack and stuffs everything in, he’ll burn the leather later, and grabs a baseball cap to stuff his hair into. 

 

The kid from before is still standing in the same position, the yellow pages of the phone book still clutched tightly between white fingers and the Soldier nods at him before walking out of the store the same way he came in. He’s safe. The Winter Soldier has gone over fifty years in commission and has yet to be caught, and he is not about to start now. He walks, guns concealed under leather and head down, avoiding the cameras that watch from poles and buildings and avoiding the eyesight of others. The plan is to be a ghost, and the best way to become something is to learn about it. 

 

He knows there’s an exhibition at the Smithsonian, about Steve and whoever he used to be. He heard his handlers talking about it before the last time he got put to sleep. Something about Nazis and the number 107, and keeping the Asset  _ ‘Away from it’.  _ It’s a bad idea, the museum is covered in cameras and surveillance and security guards, but the Soldier doesn’t know where else to go. He doesn’t know who he is or why he didn’t kill  Mission 1024, the bits and pieces are hazy. Since he pulled Steve out of the water he’s been getting flashes, tiny fragments of memories that are milliseconds long that appear and then leave before the Soldier has a chance to catch them and store them.

 

Once he gets to the museum, he enters without a second glance. He blends in effortlessly, as he always does, as he’s been taught to do, and makes his way to the Captain America exhibit. The first thing he sees is a huge, larger than life statue of Steve in the middle of the room. The outfit he’s wearing feels familiar as if the Soldier saw it once in a dream, but the memory is too incongruous for him to put together. 

 

And then he turns, and sees himself. Younger looking, healthier somehow, with a bright eyed smile and a pair of dog tags dangling around his neck. He knows it’s him, but he doesn’t recognise himself. He keeps standing there in the middle of the floor, face tucked away under the worn out rim of a baseball cap and he looks like he's there for the same reason as everyone else- to learn about Captain America and his heroic best friend’s.

 

His eyes scan the paragraph next to the photo of him. His name is James Buchanan Barnes, Bucky Barnes, he was born on March tenth and he was part of the 107th- The Howling Commandos. He was kidnapped and rescued by Steve but he grew up with him too apparently, in Brooklyn. The pieces are no less foggy than they were before, but now there’s more of them. So many, they flit in and out and the Soldier, Bucky, stands there watching them enter and pass unable to do anything except act as a passive vehicle for his own memories to pass through. He sees dark nights in forests and chilly Brooklyn mornings, the sea and the sky, and blankets piled atop a small blonde haired boy. Steve? Standing here, it’s all too much. He needs to be alone and somewhere dark and quiet. He picks up the backpack beside him and throws it over his shoulder. There is nothing left here for him to see today. His name is James Buchanan Barnes. He fell off a train in the Second World War while fighting with Captain America. The rest is unknown, at least to the American Government.

 

A few people look at him as he leaves, steal glances at the tall stocky man dressed in clothes a decade old walking purposefully through the East African exhibit, but as fast as their eyes reach him they move on finding new people and items to peer at curiously because after all, he’s a ghost. There is nothing there to see. 

**Author's Note:**

> as ever, if you enjoyed this then please leave a comment or kudos bcs its really one of my key motivations! also if you like my stuff (primarily trips in magenta) then you should subscribe so you dont miss a sequel!


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